Verizon Fios Dropped/Slow Connection

Technical Support
1

For several weeks I’ve had really bad connection to Blizzard servers. Every website and speed test I run, runs smoothly and my speeds are in the 250MBPS+ range. My general internet connectivity is fine. Blizzard games however, drop connections and run choppy - if at all.

Overwatch, my MS stays well above 100, if not over 200. “Shift N” produces a choppy line with large blocks that I presume to be dropped connections.

WoW, will just stop sending commands and then I disconnect from the entire game world and am forced to Alt+F4 in order to close the game because it stops responding.

I ran the Battle.net Looking Glass tool and selected Overwatch and the results are very telling: (Can’t format since Blizzard forums require every single line to be indented for formatting instead of a block-format code. And really? I can’t post “links” but the block of text that nearly every support article asks for includes “links” on nearly a dozen lines of output?

When I play from a wired connection, there’s no problem, but like I said, speed tests get well over 250MBPS speeds and no other website or video game has issues. However, I ran the same test from the wired desktop, and it shows the exact same drops. I guess it just has better redundancy built in?

And before the inevitable, “just play wired!!” bologna.

Wired connection is only an option for a couple hours of every day because there is only one computer able to be wired and it is in use by multiple other people for multiple other things more important than video gaming.

I have played wirelessly on a laptop, WoW for > 15 years, and Overwatch since its release.

Wired is not an option long-term.

TRACEROUTE:
traceroute to 68.134.188.242 (68.134.188.242), 15 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 Blizzard Blizzard 0.369 ms 0.356 ms 0.353 ms
2 37.244.23.131 (37.244.23.131) 0.545 ms 0.617 ms 0.680 ms
3 24.105.62.148 (24.105.62.148) 0.868 ms 0.883 ms 0.935 ms
4 137.221.66.12 (137.221.66.12) 1.957 ms 1.975 ms 2.031 ms
5 * * *
6 137.221.69.32 (137.221.69.32) 2.273 ms 2.439 ms 2.815 ms
7 7-1-4.ear7.Chicago2.Level3. net (4.7.196.133) 2.066 ms 2.403 ms 2.484 ms
8 ae-1-3510.edge1.Chicago10.Level3. net (4.69.219.14) 2.863 ms 2.786 ms 2.773 ms
9 Verizon-level3-Chicago10.Level3. net (4.68.37.186) 3.153 ms 2.849 ms 2.826 ms
10 ae199-21.BLTMMD-VFTTP-308.verizon-gni. net (100.41.22.235) 25.915 ms 25.933 ms 25.955 ms
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *

28/12/2020 14:27:02 UTC

TRACEROUTE:
traceroute to 68.134.188.242 (68.134.188.242), 15 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 Blizzard Blizzard 0.548 ms 0.574 ms 0.579 ms
2 24.105.18.130 (24.105.18.130) 1.146 ms 1.172 ms 1.178 ms
3 137.221.105.10 (137.221.105.10) 1.183 ms 1.190 ms 1.196 ms
4 137.221.66.16 (137.221.66.16) 1.159 ms 1.166 ms 1.172 ms
5 137.221.83.80 (137.221.83.80) 1210.473 ms 1210.486 ms 1210.509 ms
6 * * *
7 137.221.68.32 (137.221.68.32) 51.175 ms 47.856 ms 47.837 ms
8 las-b21-link.telia. net (62.115.178.200) 5.820 ms 5.884 ms 6.159 ms
9 157.130.245.25 (157.130.245.25) 5.849 ms 5.838 ms 5.845 ms
10 ae198-20.BLTMMD-VFTTP-308.verizon-gni. net (100.41.22.233) 62.907 ms 62.895 ms 62.901 ms
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *

28/12/2020 14:27:02 UTC

PING:
PING 68.134.188.242 (68.134.188.242) 56(84) bytes of data.

— 68.134.188.242 ping statistics —
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2999ms

28/12/2020 14:27:02 UTC

PING:
PING 68.134.188.242 (68.134.188.242) 56(84) bytes of data.

— 68.134.188.242 ping statistics —
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2999ms

28/12/2020 14:27:02 UTC

MTR:
Start: Mon Dec 28 14:27:02 2020 Blizzard 1.|-- Blizzard 0.0% 10 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.0
2.|-- 24.105.18.130 0.0% 10 0.6 2.9 0.6 19.7 6.0
3.|-- 137.221.105.10 0.0% 10 0.8 0.9 0.8 1.0 0.0
4.|-- 137.221.66.16 0.0% 10 0.4 3.7 0.4 31.6 9.8
5.|-- 137.221.83.80 0.0% 10 972.0 567.5 113.2 972.0 362.2
6.|-- 137.221.65.68 90.0% 10 14938 14938 14938 14938 0.0
7.|-- 137.221.68.32 0.0% 10 6.0 9.7 5.9 38.3 10.0
8.|-- las-b21-link.telia. net 0.0% 10 5.7 5.8 5.5 6.0 0.0
9.|-- 157.130.245.25 0.0% 10 5.9 5.7 5.5 6.0 0.0
10.|-- ae198-20.BLTMMD-VFTTP-308.verizon-gni. net 0.0% 10 63.0 63.3 62.9 64.9 0.5
11.|-- ??? 100.0 10 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

28/12/2020 14:27:02 UTC

MTR:
Start: Mon Dec 28 14:27:02 2020 Blizzard 1.|-- Blizzard 0.0% 10 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.6 0.0
2.|-- 37.244.23.3 0.0% 10 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.8 0.0
3.|-- 24.105.62.148 0.0% 10 0.7 0.9 0.5 1.2 0.0
4.|-- 137.221.66.8 0.0% 10 1.1 6.3 0.9 53.2 16.4
5.|-- ??? 100.0 10 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
6.|-- 137.221.69.32 0.0% 10 16.9 3.8 2.0 16.9 4.6
7.|-- 7-1-4.ear7.Chicago2.Level3. net 0.0% 10 1.6 1.7 1.5 1.8 0.0
8.|-- ae-1-3510.edge1.Chicago10.Level3. net 0.0% 10 7.3 5.2 2.2 12.2 3.1
9.|-- Verizon-level3-Chicago10.Level3. net 0.0% 10 2.8 3.0 2.8 3.4 0.0
10.|-- ae199-21.BLTMMD-VFTTP-308.verizon-gni. net 0.0% 10 25.1 27.7 25.1 37.8 4.2
11.|-- ??? 100.0 10 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

28/12/2020 14:27:02 UTC

2

Speed tests don’t measure connection reliability, so they are not a tool that you would use for diagnosing connection issues.

You can break links with a single space before .com, .net, etc. You can also post your WinMTR on Pastebin and link that here instead.

The Looking Glass test is used for issues logging in to the game, since it only pings the authentication server, not the game server. The WinMTR is the tool used to track down disconnections and packet loss. Capturing the issue while the test is running is the most useful data. However, your provider may use IPv6, which is not supported in the WinMTR client. If you run the test and only see 2-3 lines of connection data and lots of “No response” lines, this would mean the WinMTR won’t be useful.

3

I know very little about networking. I ran the only tool I know of, and each one shows drops well outside my home.

The Looking Glass tool has separate entries for Battle.net Authentication and each game. If choosing the game from the drop-down list doesn’t test connectivity to the game itself, what use is the tool?

Getting to the authentication point is a yes or no, either you get there or you don’t.

Playing the game is where stability matters, isn’t it? What does it matter if I have an unsteady connection to authenticate, that’s not serving me my real-time game-data. It only needs one successful connection to authenticate me, not a real-time communication tunnel.

Can someone help? Or am I just going to have to give up playing Blizzard games?

I know my home doesn’t use IPv6, there’s nothing I can do with Verizon to find out more, they told me to contact Blizzard.

So that’s what I’m doing.

4

The Looking Glass isn’t showing any drops, but I did receive feedback from the staff that the 100% ping loss may be due to your Wireless configuration ignoring the packets being sent to it. There’s nothing you can do to change that, and you likely don’t need to worry about it.

I think I missed this line on the first read, as there was a lot of information to process. If the wired connection is fine, and things get worse when you switch to wireless, then you’ve already figured out your problem. This type of interference can be caused by new devices on networks (even in homes next door to you), a new microwave, smart devices, smart assistants like Alexa or Google, or just degradation of the wireless capabilities of the network. Sometimes wireless cards go bad in computers, sometimes routers or modems go bad and need replacing. Nothing lasts forever.

It’s not that simple for some cases. Sometimes the peering partner in the middle (not their ISP and not Blizzard) is causing a problem and this test may help point that out.

Well, I tried. Troubleshooting does require patience :slight_smile: Blizzard staff read some threads, but not all. If you’re seeking an official response from them, you may need to use their ticket system.

5

I apologize if my response came off as snarky, as it sounds like it was interpreted. It was not meant as snarky, but pleading and frustrated.

I enjoy playing, I’d like to keep playing. I haven’t been able to find any suggestions of things to try, resources to contact, Verizon said it’s Blizzards’ problem, Blizzard isn’t responding.

I can authenticate without issue, I can sit at the Battle.Net app for days on end without issue. I can stream from 10 different services that I’ve tried within the past few hours, played 4 different games, all from that laptop. But the second I attempt to play a Blizzard game, my connection suddenly becomes unusable, but still only to Blizzard.

I had everything turned off except the operating system and Overwatch, it had the same problems.

I even tried streaming a movie and playing a non-Blizzard game at the same exact time as playing Overwatch. Only Overwatch had a problem. The video played seamlessly, the other game didn’t even lag, but Overwatch had a steady 200 ping and was dropping a lot of packets.

If all of that is fine, everything is fine, except Blizzard games, I have nothing more I can think of to try or do.

6

Hey Jomer,

It sounds like a router issue or a limitation of the wifi signal that you’re on. Since you mentioned things are fine when playing wired, and a wired connection would generally be more stable than wifi. I will say that the vast majority if players do not have this type of issue, and there’s tons of different routers out there that can handle it just fine.

Keep in mind that not every connection type is the same. Browsing the web and streaming video is very different than online gaming. Game connections themselves act differently, as different game clients have different requirements for what type of data is being transmitted. So they can’t be compared “apples to apples” per say.

You mentioned the router only has 1 ethernet port available? Is it a device that was provided by the ISP? It sounds like it’s maybe an older device, as most newer generation routers come with 4 ethernet ports.

Do you know if the router supports both 2.4ghz and 5ghz wifi connections (dual band)? If so, you could try connecting to whichever wifi band you’re not currently connected to. Sometimes one will be more stable than the other depending on the setup.

Beyond that you may want to look into investing in a new router, or perhaps finding a way to get switched over to a wired connection permanently since you confirmed that clears it up.

7

There are more ports available, I just cannot use them, the rooms are occupied or the middle of the kitchen, or I sit in the non-heated, non-insulated garage.

The router is maybe 2.5 years old, Orbi mesh due to home size.

Again, wired simply is not an option, it hasn’t been for the past 6 years and it likely will never be again. My situation simply doesn’t allow it and I cannot change that.

Wireless is my only option, multiple adults work from home regularly on this wifi network, everyone wireless. All year, no problems. I mean, I could go to the store and buy a brand new mesh router but I really question the reasons why that would matter since that purchase would be significant, and not just in terms of money.

Are there settings that on my end could be causing this? Why would it just start recently and never have been a problem before? The router hasn’t updated in that time, no new real changes to my network or the devices on it has happened.

I’m honestly perplexed. I understand wired is easier to ask for and account for, but it simply isn’t an option and I can’t be alone in this.

Is there nothing to do to prove where the problem lies? Laptop, Router, Verizon, or Blizzard?

8

The connection needs of the applications/services they are using may not be as intensive as game data.

Like Jambrix said:

To further elaborate: different games require different amounts of data per second. The higher the requirement (Overwatch is ~60 packets/second), the more likely the wireless network will be saturated while being shared with other users.

There may have been an update to the firmware on the modem or router that the ISP pushed to it. This would be something automatic and beyond your control. Or it might just be an issue with the wireless card in your laptop, or software causing some sort of interference, like Quality of Service settings.

Is there any chance you could install Overwatch on someone else’s laptop and try the connection there? That would narrow it down to a problem with your wireless card or a software configuration issue specific to your laptop. I’m grasping at straws here because we’re outside the scope of what’s normally covered here in the forum.

9

I was trying to figure out while falling asleep why multiple people were focusing so hard on purely my wireless connection when that is only exacerbating the issue.

Then I realized that in my first post, I said something misleading and contextual without clarifying that it was meant only within the context it was written.

I said that “…when I play from a wired connection, there’s no problem,…” that was only within the context of the MS/latency problems. I was unable to use the desktop with a wired connection until later in the evening, someone booted the game for me and went into a training room before my initial post and it had a displayed latency of < 50MS which is acceptable and fine, I didn’t ask the person to play the game because they wouldn’t know smooth gameplay from rough.

Once I actually got to play in the evening:
there was occasional teleporting (things moving suddenly an inch to the right or left)
my own character rubber-banding backwards an inch or so on my screen.

Yes, my “latency” stayed below 50ms, but I was clearly dropping a good amount of things along the way.

I don’t doubt there is some minor packet-loss with wireless, absolutely, but there IS a problem on wired too.

No one asked about running specific tests, no one asked for clarification on anything, it was an immediate prejudiced pile-on against using wifi.

What tests can I run to help identify the issue, since it isn’t just a “don’t use wifi” problem. This is 2020, most modern wifi connections are faster than ethernet cables hard-wired 10 years ago and a still faster than a good portion of them today.

I know for a fact that my wireless is faster and more stable than my parents home internet even when they use wired connections.

I did some further review of posts in the Technical Support forum, there’s a number of people posting very similar issues with few to no responses and no one trying to help them, from a variety of different ISPs, spread out over two weeks.

*EDIT: Apparently, overnight, whatever “jobs” run ended up smoothing something over slightly. I’ve had 0 changes on my end, nothing unplugged or rebooted, nothing updated, my laptop never turned off and neither did my wifi. But this morning, instead of 300ms latency, I’m sitting at high 60’s and low 70’s. Still not really playable given the nature of Overwatch, but improved nonetheless without my wifi being the problem.

Doesn’t the fact that it improved overnight with nothing in my environment changing even slightly, very strongly suggest the problem is indeed Verizon or Blizzard? If it had been a problem of mine, a reboot of some piece of equipment would be needed. We disable all updates and forbid reboots of the network during the middle of the week due to the critical necessity of maintaining a working network for working from home.

10

To be fair, the tests they can use to assist you are outlined in a thread pinned at the top of the forum: Common Technical Issues and Solutions - #30 by Drakuloth.

Both myself and Jambrix have tried to point out possible reasons this issue is happening, and I also mentioned the WinMTR earlier as a tool to help you. If you are seeing issues on both wireless and wired, then the issue may be specific to the local network configuration, the ISP’s network, or even a hardware processing delay (driver issue/overheating). A WinMTR and DxDiag may help diagnose this. There’s only one way to find out: try running both diagnostics and reviewing errors.

Not every post is going to see a response (another note mentioned in the pins). The forums are largely supported by the community, and don’t function like a ticket queue. As for posts that remain unsolved: We’re all just humans trying to help as many players as we can.

On this topic, there are always going to be players with connection issues posting in the forum. That is just the nature of online content. When the server is having issues, Blizzard makes this known on their Twitter account. They’ll also see the forum, ticket queues, and Twitter replies become flooded with alerts about it.

60-70ms is very common for North American players (it is for me), and as a general rule, not considered unplayable latency. Depending on location, pings into the mid to late 90s are common, too.

Blizzard hasn’t announced any server issues or fixes, and I’m not familiar with how Verizon handles news/updates to their network or devices.

Please remember that people are trying to help you, and it’s not kind to say we’re not “actually helping” in another thread. That doesn’t encourage anyone to continue narrowing down this problem for you.

At this point, I think it’s best if you submit your diagnostic files via the ticket system and work privately with the staff on this issue.

11

That is … very unfortunate. Prior to this problem, playing on wifi on a 3 year old laptop, I was always below 40ms latency with no teleporting, no lag, no problems, which is why I was so utterly and completely bamboozled why anyone would try and say that my usage of wifi was the problem. Anything over 55 latency, I generally considered too much delay, and I haven’t played Competitive since 2018 this being a big reason contributing to that decision, I didn’t want to hurt others’ gaming by my using such a poor connection.

I’ll give it a go, but 70 latency sounds like too high of a delay. I can literally see and feel a delay between pressing buttons and seeing the action at that latency, but I guess the alternative is not playing.

I guess I have no options at this point but to accept a doubling of my baseline latency. I’ve called Verizon three times now and spoken with different individuals and ran diagnostics and tools while on the phone with them and as far as they can tell everything on my network and my connection to Verizon is perfectly fine and not experiencing issues.

They think it could be network routing inconsistencies or “smart” machine learning scripts trying to optimize the pathing but not doing it properly. They also said that one of their nodes could have just gotten “stuck” in a cached configuration and it’s monthly reboot might clear it up.

Where is the ticketing system? I looked prior to posting here and every link and menu I went through on Blizzard’s webpage ended up taking me here and saying to post and someone would help me.

I browsed at the pinned thread titles, but they’re hundreds of pages long and have thousands of posts. What is relevant and what isn’t because there’s no way I can read through all of that stuff.

I’ve run the WinMTR this morning, but as I mentioned, something smoothed out overnight so my problem isn’t resolved but it’s no longer “bad” enough to find problems. WoW plays choppily and the disconnects are now every couple hours instead of every few minutes. Overwatch I haven’t tried yet because I’m apprehensive about 70ms latency, but I’ll try it today.

I also wasn’t aware this was a community volunteer forum, I assumed something labeled with the official company name and “Technical Support” would be official and moderated or at least reviewed by people who are trained IT who work for Blizzard and understand their network and software and could help diagnose and figure out problems.

My apologies. I was typing and describing under the assumption of trained knowledge and diagnostic abilities, not volunteers.

I work closely with IT every day in my job and this is how they require me to speak to them or they ignore me because then I’m “treating them like they don’t know their jobs”, but again, that’s what they’re trained for and I assumed that I’d be speaking to trained IT staff, not volunteers.

I apologize.

I suppose once I know where to go to submit tickets to internal support, this thread can be closed. I went to https ://us.battle. net/support/en/, but everything I typed and selected in that workflow ended up pointing me here to post.

Without someone with significant knowledge of networking and the corporate acceptance of the time it would take to figure out the issue, there’s nothing really to do within these forums for my particular problem. I’ll call in favors from friends/coworkers if it gets bad again and see if they can help me pin-point anything.

12

https://us.battle.net/support/en/help/contact/1094/ticket

The one I linked above: Common Technical Issues and Solutions - #30 by Drakuloth. This link takes you to a specific reply in the thread.

For future reference: Orange = developers, blue = forum/ticket staff, green = volunteers. MVP stands for most valuable poster/player.

It truly wasn’t necessary to mention that you didn’t expect volunteers three times, as though volunteers won’t have enough knowledge/skills to assist you.

While this isn’t my job, and Blizzard didn’t officially train me, I’ve dedicated nearly 800 hours over the past three years helping resolve technical issues related to Overwatch. Nothing you’ve described is confusing to me. When I’m stumped, I can bounce ideas off the staff and learn from those moments. Plus, the staff does review the things I say to players for accuracy, as I pointed out earlier.

Please don’t underestimate people because they aren’t being paid to do a job. Genuine interest is capable of outweighing training in many fields.

I hope the ticket staff is able to offer you some insight on this issue.